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Man of Steel, since you asked.

First, if you’ve come to this page just to read the blog entry, do me a favor–check out our fine, free comics offerings here at Thrillbent. I bring this up because it seems like a wasted opportunity not to. You don’t have to; I’m not posting a movie review here to link-bait, it’s just…well, it’s my blogspace, and we do good things here. Anyway.

Non-spoiler review: It’s not for me. It had some very nice moments, several I wish I’d written (and at least three I did, I’m proud to say–there was lots of BIRTHRIGHT in it), but I can’t imagine wanting to watch it again anytime soon. YMMV. It’s a good science-fiction movie, but it’s very cold. It’s not a very satisfying super-hero movie. That said, if your favorite part of SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE was Superman standing in the Fortress while Jor-El lectured him, you’re gonna love MAN OF STEEL.

Spoiler review:

At its emotional climax, at the moment of Superman’s ultimate “victory,” MAN OF STEEL broke my heart. I mean, absolutely snapped it clean in half.

I went in ready to forgive a lot. I knew we wouldn’t get much, if any, of the secret identity–“Clark Kent” as we know him, as a reporter in glasses, as in “disguised as…”, appears only in a cute nod, and I’ve said all my adult life that a Superman story without Clark Kent in it never really feels like a Superman story. But I was willing to give that a pass. And I suspected they’d front-loaded the story with so much Kryptonian backstory that it would end up being a science fiction movie, not a super-hero movie. But the music was good and the look of Kal-El , at least from the waist up, was good, and I had to suffer through four seasons of LOIS AND CLARK Superman with no spit-curl, so while I missed the ‘do, it was hardly a deal-breaker.

And I genuinely enjoyed the first two-thirds or so of the movie. Krypton was great. Zod was great. Really, there was a lot to like there. And I got my first of many proud-papa BIRTHRIGHT glows when we cut straight from the rocket’s entry to Clark as an adult, and I grinned like an idiot at the many, many other BIRTHRIGHT moments. I can’t really describe for you what it feels like to me to see evidence that I really have been lucky enough to add a few lasting elements to the Superman myth.

And I think you’d be surprised to find that I loved everything about Jonathan Kent. I loved his protectiveness, even when it made him sound like an asshole. (“Maybe.”) And I loved, loved, loved that scene where Clark didn’t save him, because Goyer did something magical–he took two moments that, individually, I would have hated and he welded them together into something amazing. Out of context, I would have hated that Clark said “You’re not my real dad,” or whatever he says right before the tornado. And out of context, I would have loathed that Clark stood by frozen with helplessness as the tornado killed Jonathan. But the reason that beat worked is because Clark had just said “You’re not my dad,” the last real words he said to Pa. Tearful Clark choosing to go against his every instinct in that last second because he had to show his father he trusted him after all, because he had to show Pa that Pa could trust him and that Clark had learned, Clark did love him–that worked for me, hugely. It was a very brave story choice, but it worked. It worked largely on the shoulders of Cavill, who sold it. It worked as a tragic rite of passage. I kinda wish I’d written that scene.

But about the time we got to the big Smallville fight, my Spider-Sense began to tingle. A lot of destruction. A lot of destruction–and Superman making absolutely no effort to take the fight, like, ONE BLOCK AWAY INTO A CORNFIELD INSTEAD OF ON MAIN STREET. Still, saving people here and there, but certainly never going out of his way to do so, and mostly just trying not to get his ass kicked. (I loved Clark Kent’s pal, Pete Ross, and not just because they cast pre-teen Mark Waid as Pete Ross.)

And then we got to The Battle of Metropolis, and I truly, genuinely started to feel nauseous at all the Disaster Porn. Minute after minute after endless minute of Some Giant Machine laying so much waste to Metropolis that it’s inconceivable that we weren’t watching millions of people die in every single shot. And what’s Superman doing while all this is going on? He’s halfway around the world, fighting an identical machine but with no one around to be directly threatened, so it’s only slightly less noticeable that thousands of innocents per second are dying gruesomely on his watch. Seriously, back in Metropolis, entire skyscrapers are toppling in slo-mo and the city is a smoking, gray ruin for miles in every direction, it’s Hiroshima, and Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich are somewhere muttering “Too far, man, too far”…but, you know, Superman buys the humans enough time to sacrifice many, many of their own lives to bomb the Giant Machine themselves and even makes it back to Metropolis in time to catch Lois from falling (again), so…yay?

And then Superman and Lois land in the three-mile-wide crater that used to be a city of eight million people, and the staff of the Planet and a couple of other bystanders stagger out of the rubble to see Superman and say, “He saved us,” and before you can say either “From what?” or “Wow, these eight are probably the only people left alive,” and somehow–inexplicably, implausibly, somehow–before Superman can be bothered to take one second to surrender one ounce of concern or assistance to the millions of Metropolitans who are without question still buried under all that rubble, dead or dying, he saunters lazily over to where General Zod is kneeling and moping, and they argue, and they squabble, and they break into the Third Big Fight, the one that broke my heart.

See, everyone else in Zod’s army has been beaten and banished, but General Zod lives and so, of course, he and Superman duke it out in what, to everyone’s credit, is the very best super-hero fight I’ve ever seen, just a marvel of spectacle. But once more–and this is where I knew we were headed someplace really awful–once more, Superman showed not the slightest split-second of concern for the people around them. Particularly in this last sequence, his utter disregard for the collateral damage was just jaw-dropping as they just kept crashing through buildings full of survivors. I’m not suggesting he stop in the middle of a super-powered brawl to save a kitten from a tree, but even Brandon Routh thought to use his heat vision on the fly to disintegrate deadly falling debris after a sonic boom. From everything shown to us from the moment he put on the suit, Superman rarely if ever bothered to give the safety and welfare of the people around him one bit of thought. Which is why the climax of that fight broke me.

Superman wins by killing Zod. By snapping his neck. And as this moment was building, as Zod was out of control and Superman was (for the first time since the fishing boat 90 minutes ago) struggling to actually save innocent victims instead of casually catching them in mid-plummet, some crazy guy in front of us was muttering “Don’t do it…don’t do it…DON’T DO IT…” and then Superman snapped Zod’s neck and that guy stood up and said in a very loud voice, “THAT’S IT, YOU LOST ME, I’M OUT,” and his girlfriend had to literally pull him back into his seat and keep him from walking out and that crazy guy was me. That crazy guy was me, and I barely even remember doing that, I had to be told afterward that I’d done that, that’s how caught up in betrayal I felt. And after the neck-snapping, even though I stuck it out, I didn’t give a damn about the rest of the movie.

As the credits rolled, I told myself I was upset because Superman doesn’t kill. Full-stop, Superman doesn’t kill. But sitting there, I broke it down some more in my head because I sensed there was more to it since Superman clearly regretted killing Zod. I had to grant that the filmmakers at least went way out of their way to put Superman in a position suggesting (but hardly conclusively proving) he had no choice (and I did love Superman’s immediate-aftermath reaction to what he’d done). I granted that they’d at least tried to present Superman with an impossible choice and, on a purely rational level, and if this had been a movie about a guy named Ultraguy, I might even have bought what he did. But after I processed all that, I realized that it wasn’t so much my uncompromising vision of Superman that made this a total-fail moment for me; it was the failed lead-up TO the moment. As Superman’s having his final one-on-one battle with Zod, show me that he’s going out of his way to save people from getting caught in the middle. SHOW ME that trying to simultaneously protect humans and beat Zod is achingly, achingly costing Superman the fight. Build to that moment of the hard choice…show me, without doubt, that Superman has no other out and do a better job of convincing me that it’s a hard decision to make, and maybe I’ll give it to you. But even if I do? It’s not a victory. Not this sad, soul-darkening, utterly sans-catharsis “triumph” that doesn’t even feel like a win so much as a stop-loss. Two and a half hours, and I never once got the sense that Superman really achieved or earned anything.

The essential part of Superman that got lost in MAN OF STEEL, the fundamental break in trust between the movie and the audience, is that we don’t just want Superman to save us; we want him to protect us. He was okay at the former, but really, really lousy at the latter. Once he puts on that suit, everyone he bothers to help along the way is pretty much an afterthought, a fly ball he might as well shag since he’s flying past anyway, so what the hell. Where Christopher Reeve won me over with his portrayal was that his Superman clearly cared about everyone. Yes, this Superman cares in the abstract–he is willing to surrender to Zod to spare us–but the vibe I kept getting was that old Charles Schulz line: “I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.”

Look, I know everyone involved in MAN OF STEEL went into it with the best of intentions. And trust me, there are not rivers or coastlines on this planet long enough to measure just how much I wanted to love this movie. If you don’t know me, you can’t imagine. And there were certainly things to like. But there was no triumph to it. None of Superman’s victories in this movie are in any way the kind of stand-up-and-cheer events you’d think necessary in a movie with Superman in it. Did it succeed in what it sent out to do? I think probably so. But what it set out to do, as it turns out, leaves me cold. With the exception of the first-flight beat–the smile Superman gets when he first takes to the air–it’s utterly joyless. From start to finish. Utterly. Joyless. And I just have no interest in relentless joyless from a guy who can fly.

502 thoughts on “Man of Steel, since you asked.”

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“Pa was willing to sacrifice himself to protect Clark’s secret ,because in spite of their brief argument in which Clark shouted out that Jonathan was not his father he was his father, his Pa, and Clark was his son, and he wanted to protect him.”

Again that’s irrelevant to CLARK’S motive. As obsessed as Pa was over the secret, it was Clark’s secret, not his father’s. Inevitably it would be Clark’s choice what to do with the truth of what and who he is and where he comes from. I cannot picture any Superman just standing and watching someone die, especially not his father. After all is said and done, Clark would acknowledge his father’s position on the issue, but save his life anyway and deal with the consequences and undoubtedly his father’s over-the-top reaction later.

and said:

“That was part of the story, learning to trust in humanity. At that point they didn’t trust that humanity, like the people of Smallville, would understand the truth of who Clark is.”

The reaction from Whitney’s mother was absurd. Her child was rescued. I’d have much more believed that she would tell the Kents how grateful she is and she would keep their boy’s secret. The writing was incredibly awful by a writer who clearly knew next to nothing about Superman, a name he seemed fearful to even have spoken. Now we seem to have all of Smallville knowing Clark is Superman? How’s that going to work out?

Think about it. If Mrs Fordman reacted the logical way, with gratitude and a pledge never to tell Clark’s secret, then it’s fine if all Smallville learned the secret, but having them suspicious and seemingly vindictive, wouldn’t they just blab to the world who Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet, really is and blow his secret around the globe?

and said:

“There is no such thing as “the real Superman”. What there is is people’s perception of who they think Superman is or is supposed to be based on the material they’ve been exposed to, whether it’s movies, cartoons, or comic books.”

Of course there’s a real Superman. They’re all the same “real” Superman when written correctly and with respect to the myth.

and said:

“For instance, the “ORIGINAL” Superman, i.e. the one from the Golden Age, wouldn’t have any problem snapping Zod’s neck right after he threatened Martha”

The original Superman, the one who wasn’t the bald villain, but I assume the one in Action #1 from 1938, beat up a wife beater. You mention Jurgens, and he had a similar approach to Superman when it came to dealing with a wife beater over fifty years later. However in both cases that’s a far cry from breaking someone’s neck.

and said:

“These are the same people who’ve been whining ever since the Byrne reboot in the 80s, because they cannot grasp the difference between iterations of the character, like The Golden Age, the Silver Age, The Bronze Age, The Modern Age, and whatever name historians end up giving to the era between 2003 and now in which writers focused more on recycling old material from the 60s and constantly rebooting Superman than they did in telling good stories.”

Byrne really didn’t change the true tenets of what makes Superman Superman. For instance, it was still the story of a guy who came from doomed Krypton, right? It was still the story of him being raised by a kindly Kansas farm couple, right? It was still the story of a guy with a dual identity, right? Some objections might be that in Byrne’s version Clark was the real dude and Superman was the disguise, but again, when you get right down to it, that’s still a dual identity of Clark Kent and Superman. And Clark went to work at the Daily Planet and fell in love with Lois Lane.

Those are the things average joes, not comic book geeks, know about Superman. There was a lot of happy anticipation for this movie, but it ended up with only 56% positive reviews from critics (re Rotton Tomatoes) because of the shortfalls to basic “Superman” expectation. Many never recovered from Clark letting his dad die and a high percentage couldn’t get over the endless carnage. Yet others were bored by the carnage, calling it repetitive and over long.

and said:

“Superman in Man of Steel is no more the “real”, or rather, “original” Superman than Weisinger’s Superman from the 60′s is the real Superman, or Maggin’s Superman from the 70′s is the “real” Superman, or Byrne’s from the 80′s, or Jurgens’ from the 90′s, or Loeb’s and Waid’s from the early 21st Century. They are all variations on the ORIGINAL version created by Siegel and Shuster.”

Supes from the 50s and 60s was mainly a kiddie book. Go read the super dickory pages LOL . I didn’t see anything off track about Loeb’s, Jurgens’ or Waid’s Superman except for making him a vegan, but even that politically correct addition was exactly that, just something tacked on for the sake of tacking it on. In other words Superman eating a salad instead of a nice t-bone, does not change the fact that he came from Krypton, was raised by the Kents, adopted a dual identity, got a job at the Daily Planet and fell for Lois Lane as in the other versions.

Window dressing changes are nothing, they come and go, but the stuff Siegel and Shuster created that comprise Superman remain three-quarters of a century later. That excludes Elseworlds and the old Imaginary Story formats, though some of Man of Steel kind of fits those two categories LOL

“Again that’s irrelevant to CLARK’S motive. As obsessed as Pa was over the secret, it was Clark’s secret, not his father’s. Inevitably it would be Clark’s choice what to do with the truth of what and who he is and where he comes from. I cannot picture any Superman just standing and watching someone die, especially not his father. After all is said and done, Clark would acknowledge his father’s position on the issue, but save his life anyway and deal with the consequences and undoubtedly his father’s over-the-top reaction later.”

Clark chose to follow his father’s wish. That’s it.

“The reaction from Whitney’s mother was absurd. Her child was rescued. I’d have much more believed that she would tell the Kents how grateful she is and she would keep their boy’s secret. The writing was incredibly awful by a writer who clearly knew next to nothing about Superman, a name he seemed fearful to even have spoken. Now we seem to have all of Smallville knowing Clark is Superman? How’s that going to work out?

Think about it. If Mrs Fordman reacted the logical way, with gratitude and a pledge never to tell Clark’s secret, then it’s fine if all Smallville learned the secret, but having them suspicious and seemingly vindictive, wouldn’t they just blab to the world who Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet, really is and blow his secret around the globe?”

They might. It’s all part of the same plot. Who you can and who you can’t trust. They might blab and no one might believe them, except for ONE person, Lex Luthor.

Just because the plot doesn’t work out the way certain people want it to, it doesn’t mean it’s bad writing. It just means that it doesn’t follow the same old tired pattern.

There’s nothing logical about the way you think she should have reacted. The way she reacted is the credible way. You’re thinking in terms of how she would react in a world populated by super powered beings, not thinking of how she would react in the real world. How someone who, based on her reaction is a religious person, would react to the discovery of a super powered being.

She reacted the way someone like her would, choosing to worship the super powered being.

“Of course there’s a real Superman. They’re all the same “real” Superman when written correctly and with respect to the myth.”

This movie respects the myth. What it doesn’t do is follow the pattern of the Silver Age version, which is what the complainers want.

“The original Superman, the one who wasn’t the bald villain, but I assume the one in Action #1 from 1938, beat up a wife beater. You mention Jurgens, and he had a similar approach to Superman when it came to dealing with a wife beater over fifty years later. However in both cases that’s a far cry from breaking someone’s neck.”

Wife beater versus Kryptonian bent on genocide. Far cry indeed.

You don’t really expect Superman to deal with Zod the same way he would with a wife beater, do you? ” Byrne really didn’t change the true tenets of what makes Superman Superman. For instance, it was still the story of a guy who came from doomed Krypton, right? It was still the story of him being raised by a kindly Kansas farm couple, right? It was still the story of a guy with a dual identity, right? Some objections might be that in Byrne’s version Clark was the real dude and Superman was the disguise, but again, when you get right down to it, that’s still a dual identity of Clark Kent and Superman. And Clark went to work at the Daily Planet and fell in love with Lois Lane.”

Don’t tell me, tell Mark Waid. A few years ago he did a chat with CBR in which he pointed out how much he hated Man of Steel when it was originally published. Tell him, and tell other people who think like he does.

You’re right in what you say, but that doesn’t stop certain people from still hating Man of Steel, the comic, for not being what they want it to be.

“Those are the things average joes, not comic book geeks, know about Superman. There was a lot of happy anticipation for this movie, but it ended up with only 56% positive reviews from critics (re Rotton Tomatoes) because of the shortfalls to basic “Superman” expectation. Many never recovered from Clark letting his dad die and a high percentage couldn’t get over the endless carnage. Yet others were bored by the carnage, calling it repetitive and over long.”

And yet the movie is a financial hit. That tells you how little what critics think actually matters.

“Supes from the 50s and 60s was mainly a kiddie book. Go read the super dickory pages LOL . I didn’t see anything off track about Loeb’s, Jurgens’ or Waid’s Superman except for making him a vegan, but even that politically correct addition was exactly that, just something tacked on for the sake of tacking it on. In other words Superman eating a salad instead of a nice t-bone, does not change the fact that he came from Krypton, was raised by the Kents, adopted a dual identity, got a job at the Daily Planet and fell for Lois Lane as in the other versions.”

Loeb returned him to the Silver Age Krypton and Waid rehashed Luthor’s Silver Age origin for no reason other than to make the comic more like it was back then.

That’s not off track?

“Window dressing changes are nothing, they come and go, but the stuff Siegel and Shuster created that comprise Superman remain three-quarters of a century later. That excludes Elseworlds and the old Imaginary Story formats, though some of Man of Steel kind of fits those two categories LOL”

Man of Steel, the movie, fairly skews close to the modern age Superman seen in shows like Lois & Clark and Smallville, cartoons like Superman and Justice League, and comics like those of the 8s0 and 90s and Earth One. It’s hardly an Elseworlds.

Mark Waid: I’m not going out of my way to be inoffensive. I’m just remembering how much I hated John Byrne’s Superman reboot back in 1986 and how upset I was over it, and remembering that helps me feel compassion for Mary Jane lovers. Seriously.

I agree wholeheartedly with the gist of your blog, Mark. This movie is SINO (Superman In Name Only).

What I don’t understand from these many internet discussions is this: why anyone would have expected anything different from a director like Zack Snyder. Had anyone actually seen 300 or Sucker Punch or Watchmen? He seems more interested in green-screen/CGI mayhem and pure banality than any director since Michael Bay. I had went in with low expectations, and that didn’t change after leaving the theater. It’s more of the same summer movie fare: cynical disaster porn. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Even The Hobbit: Part 1 was a never-ending, joyless journey through directorial excesses. During the many cartoonish fight sequences with myriad goblins and orcs, I expected video game score points to suddenly appear above the mayhem the way it was filmed. And now the powers-that-be are considering rebooting Terminator. It was bad enough that they filmed the last two stinkers and had the story die out painfully, but now they’ll give another beloved classic the 21st Century summer movie makeover: why have characters and a plot when you can just blow shit up over and over and over?

“But what it set out to do, as it turns out, leaves me cold. With the exception of the first-flight beat–the smile Superman gets when he first takes to the air–it’s utterly joyless. From start to finish. Utterly. Joyless. And I just have no interest in relentless joyless from a guy who can fly.”

This sums up my biggest problem with the movie. It just felt so, so cold. If this is what it takes to “modernize” superheroes and “make them relevant,” then I really don’t want to have any part of it.

And yet again, it’s not about what Jonathan wanted. It was the Man of Steel, not the Man of Overalls. Would Superman, as we’ve all grown up with him, ever let his dad die if he could’ve saved his life? Not only no, but hell no. Wait, I’ll amend that and say that Mark Waid would be happy for Clark to let Pa Kent die as long as Clark was bratty first and told Jonathan he wasn’t his real father. P.U.

and said:

“They might. It’s all part of the same plot. Who you can and who you can’t trust. They might blab and no one might believe them, except for ONE person, Lex Luthor.”

He didn’t believe Amanda McCoy, why would he believe a small town nobody? Lex can suspect in any version, but he can never know, at least not permanently. Though the writers seem clueless enough about the Superman myth they’d probably break that tenet too.

and said:

“Just because the plot doesn’t work out the way certain people want it to, it doesn’t mean it’s bad writing. It just means that it doesn’t follow the same old tired pattern.”

Being faithful to a myth’s history is not about following “old tired patterns”. Is ‘Superman’ about a new character with a combo Aquaman/Thor costume who now believes killing is an option? A guy who lets his dad die because his dad was obsessed with a secret that they both seemed too dumb to cover for? No thanks. Whoever’s myth that is, it seems to be Superman’s myth in name only, especially when it came to life and death decisions.

and said:

“There’s nothing logical about the way you think she should have reacted. The way she reacted is the credible way.”

A credible way for who? A corporate lawyer? She sure didn’t react like a real mother grateful her son’s life was saved. If they wanted a negative reaction from her, then have Clark do something negative to her son.

and said:

” You’re thinking in terms of how she would react in a world populated by super powered beings, not thinking of how she would react in the real world. How someone who, based on her reaction is a religious person, would react to the discovery of a super powered being.”

Not at all. Even thinking in terms of how my own mom would react if someone saved MY life. She might ponder how he did it, but she’d thank Clark and his mother and if a secret was involved, she’d promise to keep it in gratitude for what Clark had done for her kid. Why? Because he saved a life, he saved SEVERAL lives. Why would anyone think ill of him even if he could do it with what would appear to either be magic, or super strength?

In fact, if Clark said “I just felt this huge surge of adrenalin and the bus rose up”, that would be that. There’s certainly enough stories of adrenalin leading to amazing feats of strength. He could have even said he opened the back door hoping everyone could swim out and then there was a huge pocket of air that bubbled up under the bus lifting it to the surface. No one else but Clark could argue the point because he was the only one not about to breathe his last gasp of air on that bus, but, again, we have Clark being too stupid to think of what to say. There’s a reason Smallville fans called Clark a BDA (Big Dumb Alien) LOL

and said:

“This movie respects the myth. What it doesn’t do is follow the pattern of the Silver Age version, which is what the complainers want.”

Totally wrong, at least for me. The Silver Age is good for a nostalgic laugh since some of the writers almost seemed like they were smoking wacky teebacky back in the day, but when revivals are done of the Silver Age, they flop because they make the mistake of trying to take the screwy silly stuff from the kid books seriously and it just doesn’t work.

and said:

“Wife beater versus Kryptonian bent on genocide. Far cry indeed.”

Zod was all alone at that point. The poor writing continued. Yet again lump-headed Clark can’t think of any better way to deal with Zod. He might literally be the dumbest Superman ever.

“Don’t tell me, tell Mark Waid. A few years ago he did a chat with CBR in which he pointed out how much he hated Man of Steel when it was originally published. Tell him, and tell other people who think like he does.”

I know Waid hates Byrne’s revamp because he wants the dual identity to be the version where Clark Kent is the disguise and Superman is the real person. I’m ok with either way, but I don’t like the nerdy Clark take. He can be mild mannered without being someone so annoying you want to slap around like Steve Lombard would LOL

and said:

“And yet the movie is a financial hit. That tells you how little what critics think actually matters.”

Snyder will get another Superman movie because of the box office receipts, although Superman Returns also did good at the box office, but Man of Steel 2 has already been announced.

and said:

“Loeb returned him to the Silver Age Krypton and Waid rehashed Luthor’s Silver Age origin for no reason other than to make the comic more like it was back then.

That’s not off track?”

Don’t mistake me with someone who liked Loeb’s Origins, in point of fact, I did not. I particularly hated the uncanny valley artwork depicting Clark Kent looking like Chris Reeve. The man is dead, and even though I loved his old movies, they’re long gone. I wish they’d let the poor guy rest in peace.

As for Waid’s Birthright, I see it more as a stand alone since it flopped as a reboot. I can see why Waid liked let-dad-die Clark from the movie because his Clark stood by letting Jimmy getting humiliated and did nothing to help him out because it would endanger his weak kitten disguise. OK fine, no killing involved so let Jimmy be dissed until Lois came to his rescue, but it’s just one of those reasons that makes me wonder why we need Clark Kent in the Silver Age version at all. The newspaper ‘ear to the ground’ reason is old hat. If Silver Age cheerleaders are so dead set on Superman being the real person, why have Clark? Just to be comedy relief?

“Man of Steel, the movie, fairly skews close to the modern age Superman seen in shows like Lois & Clark and Smallville, cartoons like Superman and Justice League, and comics like those of the 8s0 and 90s and Earth One. It’s hardly an Elseworlds.”

The Elseworld part is letting Pa die when he could’ve saved him and of course breaking Zod’s neck. Yeah, he had remorse, but he still comes off as being limited in his intelligence in terms of having a super brain for dealing in a nonlethal way with the bad guy.

“And yet again, it’s not about what Jonathan wanted. It was the Man of Steel, not the Man of Overalls. Would Superman, as we’ve all grown up with him, ever let his dad die if he could’ve saved his life? Not only no, but hell no. Wait, I’ll amend that and say that Mark Waid would be happy for Clark to let Pa Kent die as long as Clark was bratty first and told Jonathan he wasn’t his real father. P.U.”

Of course it was about what Jonathan wanted. He wanted to protect Clark’s secret and chose to sacrifice himself to do so.

“He didn’t believe Amanda McCoy, why would he believe a small town nobody? Lex can suspect in any version, but he can never know, at least not permanently. Though the writers seem clueless enough about the Superman myth they’d probably break that tenet too.”

They’re not clueless, they’re merely writing a DIFFERENT ITERATION of the character, NOT rehashing the one you want them to. There’s a difference.

“Being faithful to a myth’s history is not about following “old tired patterns”. Is ‘Superman’ about a new character with a combo Aquaman/Thor costume who now believes killing is an option? A guy who lets his dad die because his dad was obsessed with a secret that they both seemed too dumb to cover for? No thanks. Whoever’s myth that is, it seems to be Superman’s myth in name only, especially when it came to life and death decisions.”

It’s not in name only. It’s DIFFERENT.

See, it’s as different as saying that Luthor is a sore Superboy fanboy who hates his former idol because he burned his hair instead of saying that Luthor is a European arms’ merchant who lives on a floating city in the sky.

Certain people have convinced themselves that the former version is the “true”, “real” version of the character and completely ignore the latter, even though the latter is the ACTUAL original version.

It’s different takes on the same concept. It doesn’t make one any more “in name only” than the other. Each one belongs to a different version or iteration of the characters and story. One is from the Golden Age and the other is from the Silver Age.

Man of Steel the movie has its OWN take on things. In spite of what people may want to, the Silver Age is NOT the end all and be all of Superman. Characters can change in accordance to a version of the story and still remain true to their conception.

“A credible way for who? A corporate lawyer? She sure didn’t react like a real mother grateful her son’s life was saved. If they wanted a negative reaction from her, then have Clark do something negative to her son.”

Clark was a tween boy who pushed a school bus out of the water! It’s not like he was a police officer or fireman who jumped into the river to save her son. What he did was, to a regular average person living in a world without superhumans, a DIVINE act. A child pushed a school bus that weighs several tons out of the water. Her reaction to that IS credible.

Isn’t Kansas in the so-called “Bible Belt”? Her son experienced what is comparable to a divine act of God. To the eyes of someone like her, who if I remember correctly did in fact mention her faith, it would almost seem like God had empowered Clark to save the children in the bus.

“Not at all. Even thinking in terms of how my own mom would react if someone saved MY life. She might ponder how he did it, but she’d thank Clark and his mother and if a secret was involved, she’d promise to keep it in gratitude for what Clark had done for her kid. Why? Because he saved a life, he saved SEVERAL lives. Why would anyone think ill of him even if he could do it with what would appear to either be magic, or super strength?

In fact, if Clark said “I just felt this huge surge of adrenalin and the bus rose up”, that would be that. There’s certainly enough stories of adrenalin leading to amazing feats of strength. He could have even said he opened the back door hoping everyone could swim out and then there was a huge pocket of air that bubbled up under the bus lifting it to the surface. No one else but Clark could argue the point because he was the only one not about to breathe his last gasp of air on that bus, but, again, we have Clark being too stupid to think of what to say. There’s a reason Smallville fans called Clark a BDA (Big Dumb Alien) LOL”

You’re thinking in terms of simplistic Silver Age writing. Like when in Birthright Clark gets shot in the back and he dismisses his torn shirt as it ripping on a door as they left the restaurant.

Just because he could come up with a convoluted lie doesn’t mean that anyone would believe it. He could come up with a hundred different excuses and explanations for how the bus came out of the water and the woman could still refuse to believe him and credit God for the miracle that saved her son.

You have faith that the woman won’t reveal Clark’s secret. That’s the point of the movie! That the Kents did NOT have that faith in people to keep Clark’s secret.

“Totally wrong, at least for me. The Silver Age is good for a nostalgic laugh since some of the writers almost seemed like they were smoking wacky teebacky back in the day, but when revivals are done of the Silver Age, they flop because they make the mistake of trying to take the screwy silly stuff from the kid books seriously and it just doesn’t work.”

Right.

“Zod was all alone at that point. The poor writing continued. Yet again lump-headed Clark can’t think of any better way to deal with Zod. He might literally be the dumbest Superman ever.”

It doesn’t matter if Zod was alone or if he had a contingent of soldiers. He was still a better fighter than Superman and determined to kill humanity. Clark COULD have stopped him in the MOMENT, but not for good.

“I know Waid hates Byrne’s revamp because he wants the dual identity to be the version where Clark Kent is the disguise and Superman is the real person. I’m ok with either way, but I don’t like the nerdy Clark take. He can be mild mannered without being someone so annoying you want to slap around like Steve Lombard would LOL”

Yeah.

“Snyder will get another Superman movie because of the box office receipts, although Superman Returns also did good at the box office, but Man of Steel 2 has already been announced.”

Man of Steel did MUCH better than Returns. MUCH, MUCH better.

“Don’t mistake me with someone who liked Loeb’s Origins, in point of fact, I did not. I particularly hated the uncanny valley artwork depicting Clark Kent looking like Chris Reeve. The man is dead, and even though I loved his old movies, they’re long gone. I wish they’d let the poor guy rest in peace.”

They never will.

“As for Waid’s Birthright, I see it more as a stand alone since it flopped as a reboot. I can see why Waid liked let-dad-die Clark from the movie because his Clark stood by letting Jimmy getting humiliated and did nothing to help him out because it would endanger his weak kitten disguise. OK fine, no killing involved so let Jimmy be dissed until Lois came to his rescue, but it’s just one of those reasons that makes me wonder why we need Clark Kent in the Silver Age version at all. The newspaper ‘ear to the ground’ reason is old hat. If Silver Age cheerleaders are so dead set on Superman being the real person, why have Clark? Just to be comedy relief?”

Nostalgia. I agree, Clark doesn’t need to work at the Planet to have his ear to the ground, specially at a print paper. Not today. Today all he needs is a Smarthphone. He could be Superman 24/7.

“The Elseworld part is letting Pa die when he could’ve saved him and of course breaking Zod’s neck. Yeah, he had remorse, but he still comes off as being limited in his intelligence in terms of having a super brain for dealing in a nonlethal way with the bad guy.”

That doesn’t make it an Elseworlds. It merely makes it different from other versions.

By your definition, the Silver Age is an Elseworlds – or imaginary story. By your definition, everything after the Golden Age is an Elseworlds.

I like Mark Waid’s writing and respect his opinions but disagree with some of them wholeheartedly.

I have loved and read comics all my life, and yet I had little problem with this film.

As an adult I welcome and appreciate mature takes on things I loved as a child, as I still have memories and [sometimes] physical goods of the originals so I can tumble into nostalgia whenever I want to.

I, for one was glad to be free of the 50’s era paradoxical “might-as-well-be magic” nonsense. Donner’s Superman has a permanent place on my all time favorite movies list, and yet the last thing I want to see is a retread of that film, or a slavish retelling of that or any other story or myth over and over again.

I am tired of the wink-and-nod, “might-as-well-be-Jesus Christ” Superman. Just as I tire of the “I had this case solved before I got out of bed this morning,” gadget-laden Batman.

In fact, the only complaints that I had about the film were the not-so-veiled allusions to the Christ myth, and the in-too-close chase camera for some of the flying sequences that made them a nearly unreadable blur.

Apart from those gripes I liked the organic feel of MOS. I liked seeing the hero stumble and recover, fall and get back up, instead of being some self-aware puppet of manifest destiny.

Everyone is lamenting the so called ‘dark…disaster porn’ and Superman’s seeming callousness in the film. I guess many them have never been in a real brawl before, or (more importantly) have never seen how badly many soldier, police, and EMS recruits perform during their first training exercises.

This Superman went from living a nomadic existence, to learning of his birthright and that his abilities aren’t a fluke or something that might wear off, to discovering he can generate a field to defy gravity, to then be forced to defend himself and Earth against essentially a roguegroup of Kryptonian spec-ops soldiers,–all in just about a month.

No fancy data-dump to the brain a-la the Matrix (and other Superman incarnations), no years of practice. Nope. –just “Hey! …You look smart enough to point the gun in the right direction so here’s a rifle, you’re a soldier now.”

I also appreciated that this Superman had legitimate limits and was not an all-powerful being, who can travel faster than the speed of light, or lift whole continents, etc., and he requires genuine assistance from others, not just the token “Here, Superman I have built [insert Mcguffin here] so you can use it to win”.

“…The essential part of Superman that got lost in MAN OF STEEL, the fundamental break in trust between the movie and the audience, is that we don’t just want Superman to save us; we want him to protect us.”

What?!

Uh, No Mark.

I went to see MOS because I wanted to be entertained by a tale wonder, not for salvation or some fulfillment via a Christ/God analogue. Superman… Hercules… Thor… I want to see new interpretations of those characters in new adventures, otherwise I would save my money and re-ingest the ones I already own.

I (rightfully, in this case) trust that the filmmakers would not serve up some tired, half-assed retread of a known story. That is the only trust/expectation I should place in them when I hand over my money.

“I guess many them have never been in a real brawl before, or (more importantly) have never seen how badly many soldier, police, and EMS recruits perform during their first training exercises.”

The problem is that many people don’t want to see those things applied to Superman. They want Superman to forever live in the fantasy land of the Silver Age. The only kind of changes they would accept would be aesthetic modifications, not conceptual or shifts in tone.

In the interest of accuracy, this is what Superman actually did. It was not murder.

“The concept of justifiable homicide in criminal law stands on the dividing line between an excuse, justification and an exculpation. It differs from other forms of homicide in that, due to certain circumstances, the homicide is justified as preventing greater harm to innocents. A homicide can only be justified if there is sufficient evidence to suggest that it was reasonable to believe that the offending party posed an imminent threat to the life or wellbeing of another.”

I totally understand where you are coming from. A couple of things though… When superman put on that suit for the first time, it made me feel like he had never used his powers fully for any reason… So he was new to the whole “saving people” thing. Comic books, movies(animated), and or tv shows ALWAYS show someone getting thrown into buildings but you never think there was someone in them(think dragon balls z). I got the feeling through out the whole movie that he was inexperienced in the whole saving lives or strategy(get out of the city to save lives thing).

I missed the opening weekend to Man of Steel because my son was born. I was that I might take him, even as an infant, to see the movie at an early showing in a discount theater, but after reading this review, I’m not sure I ever want him to know this kind of Superman. It breaks my heart.

If what you don’t want him to see is a Superman who kills, then don’t let him watch Superman II, in which he kills Zod, or Superman III, in which he kills himself, or Superman IV, in which he kills Nuclear Man, or Superman Returns, in which he kills Luthor’s henchmen.

Q: Why did Superman kill Zod? Couldn’t he have done something else? Did that family Zod was going to kill survive?

A: Superman and Zod had fought to a standstill. The official novelization explains that the position they were in wouldn’t allow Superman the leverage he needed to fly – to carry them away from the train station. “It was all he could do to restrain his opponent.” Additionally, Zod clearly stated several times that he’d never stop, and even told Superman that the only way the fight was going to end was with one of them dying. Zod even explained that his sole remaining purpose (now that his own people were gone) was to destroy everyone on Earth. “I exist only to protect Krypton. That is the sole purpose for which I was born, and every action I take, no matter how violent or how cruel, is for the greater good of my people. And now I have no people. My soul… that is what you have taken from me. I’m going to make them suffer, Kal. These humans you’ve adopted. I will take them all from you… one by one!” “There’s only one way this ends, Kal! Either you die – or I do.” The official novelization even goes on to explain that Zod may have intentionally forced Superman’s hand as a way to attain a “glorious death in combat”. Superman is clearly devastated at being forced to kill. Superman ended the fight, not only to save the lives of the family Zod was threatening with his heat-vision, but the millions of others Zod would have continued to kill. There was no way to restrain him, no way of sending him into the Phantom Zone, and Zod had clearly stated he’d never stop killing humans.

So I figured a lot of people had already evacuated the buildings, and in fact The Daily Planet is one of the closer buildings to the epicenter, so a lot of people there had already started fleeing the city. We did have a few shots of people fleeing across a bridge, but that was cut in the end. Obviously I didn’t write the script, but when I was storyboarding it, I tried to make sure that it was as relentless as possible.

I’m going over Superman: Birthright #10 and #11 and it’s clear that Metropolis is as destroyed during the faux Kryptonians’ attack as it is in Man of Steel, if not more given that their assault covers the entire city and not just a small are as it does in the movie.

Any complain about the amount of destruction in Man of Steel is hypocritical as this comic, which many here have praised, does the exact same thing.

Of course it counts! The scene was written, it was cast, it was produced, it was filmed! It may probably end up on the DVD/Blu-Ray.

The people on the streets were the employees from the Planet. Everyone else who would have been in those buildings evacuated. We have word from someone who was actually involved with the production of the movie saying that there is a scene of people being evacuated from the city.

You’re just arguing for the sake of arguing even though you and other complainers have been proven wrong.

No one saw it. People have been arguing about deleted scenes from Superman II not counting, but this does? Malarkey. You’d have to be less than a fool to accept the intellectual dishonesty your spinning.

I don’t THINK there were no people in the buildings, I know it. It’s you and other complainers who’ve convinced themselves that those buildings were full of people. PROVE IT.

You have to prove that the people of Metropolis were too stupid to leave during an assault by an alien space ship on their city. That the military did not evacuate them. That of ALL the buildings in Metropolis, the only one that emptied out during the attack was the Daily Planet because that’s the only one we saw be evacuated in the movie.

You have to demonstrate a lack of common sense from the people in those buildings to willingly stay during this massive attack.

In the absence of evidence to prove your position, you have to accept that you are wrong.

You have the word of someone involved in the actual making of the movie telling you that the people were evacuated and yet you’re still too stubborn to accept it.

You’ve convinced yourself – or allowed others to do so – that these people willfully made a movie in which Superman callously killed innocent people during his fight with Zod.

There’s no evidence whatsoever to back that assertion, yet the complainers keep making it.

No, you prove it, Mr Malarkey. You keep spouting pseudo-evidence and calling anyone a complainer who calls you on your nonsense. You yourself have NO PROOF except for what you keep inventing. Your lightweight intellectual posits are laughter.

The only one inventing anything here is the complainers who insist that there are people in those buildings.

You’re so full of it that you haven’t even realized that we’re discussing the same thing.

You contend that even though we didn’t see the people in the buildings that they are there.

I’m contending that even though we didn’t see the people evacuate they did.

You contend that because the scene showing the people evacuate isn’t in the movie it may as well not exist.

I contend to your contention that unless we see people inside the buildings they are not there (i.e. they don’t exist).

If you accept YOUR own argument that the people are in there even though we don’t see them, you have to accept MY argument that the people evacuated even if we don’t see them do it.

The difference between your contention and mine is that I have the statement of someone who was actually involved in the making of the movie to back mine up. You have NOTHING other than your stubborn belief that from conception to scripting to storyboarding to casting to location shooting to blocking, to CGI to shooting to editing the makers of this movie deliberately set out to make a movie in which Superman callously kills innocent people.

You choose to ignore the statement of the storyboarded telling you that such a thing is not true. Telling you and all the other complainers that you are WRONG.

More malarkey. You cannot prove your point at all, yet others are complainers. If the creators of the film had shown people being evacuated, as they did in other films, or had shown Superman trying to aid people to safety, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. They did not show any one being evacuated. We hear nothing in the film of people being evacuated. We see people on the street, which is a sign that people have not been evacuated. Your apologist drivel doesn’t change the fact that the creator of MOS handle things with less than a novice’s skill. You could admit it, but you cling to your security blanket of a storyboarder’s words, that never appeared in the film, and have no bearing because they appeared in the film. No about of your malarkey will change that. Spin Doctor, heal thyself.

It is you who has no standing, as your argument is flawed. Your contention that there were people in the buildings lacks evidence to support it. You’ve deluded yourself into believing it or allowed others to do so, and your delusion runs so deep that you will even ignore the word of someone who was involved with the actual production of the movie telling you that you are wrong.

Again, you’re railing for a position with no facts. If destruction occurs in that scale, unless we’re shown otherwise, people die. If we’re shown evidence to the contrary, we’re not going to assume people were evacuated. A simple scene as was done in the Avengers would have solved it, but saving lines was as irrelevant to the creators as it was to Superman.

In Man of Steel, Superman slams Zod against a clearly empty building (clearly empty as people had already been evacuated before their fight started), and yet the complainers accuse him of killing the people they think were in that building.

In the last episode of Justice League Unlimited, Superman tosses Darkseid through a building that has NOT been evacuated (clearly not evacuated as there was no prior warning). Did any of the MoS complainers accuse Bruce Timm of writing an episode in which Superman callously killed the people in that building?

Michael Sacal said: People did die, but not because of anything Superman did. They died when Zod activated the Black Zero.

By the time Superman got there, the people had been evacuated. The last to leave were the members of the Planet staff.

Prove it, Mr Malarkey. The onus is on you.

And said: “In Man of Steel, Superman slams Zod against a clearly empty building (clearly empty as people had already been evacuated before their fight started), and yet the complainers accuse him of killing the people they think were in that building.

In the last episode of Justice League Unlimited, Superman tosses Darkseid through a building that has NOT been evacuated (clearly not evacuated as there was no prior warning). Did any of the MoS complainers accuse Bruce Timm of writing an episode in which Superman callously killed the people in that building?”

You’re using JLU to support your posit? Why, because there’s nothing in MOS to help you out? You cannot defend your position because it’s defenseless, but it’s entertaining watching you try.

You’re the one who keeps hammering that there were no people in the buildings with nothing to show for it. You’re expecting someone believe that all of buildings were completely evacuated except the Daily Planet building, with no proof other than what a storyboarder has said, which is irrelevant. The notion that what you say is true appeals only to someone as blind as Superman was in the film. You only have to look around to see that it didn’t happen. Please keep spinning. It’s what you do well. Leave reasoning to those who aren’t afraid of being honest about MOS and whatever flaws it may have.

Only a fool would consider the idea that anyone would make a movie in which Superman callously kills innocent people.

The storyboarder’s statement about the existence of a scene that shows people evacuating the city carries weight. Your problem is that you have blinders over your eyes that keep you from seeing the facts.

It’s too bad that the creators made that film. More of a shame that you support it. From Smallville to Metropolis, Superman shows no regard for the destruction he causes and no concern for the people. You can’t wipe that away with your pseudo-explanations and half-witted rhetoric. One scene would have been enough, but that would have interrupted the enjoyment of vapid minds who soak up such nonsense.

The shame – or even rather the irony – is that the complainers have no faith in Superman to trust him to do the right thing. You are guided by what you see and not by what you don’t see. The fact that we’re talking about Superman should be enough for anyone to believe that he would never endanger the lives of innocent people or callously kill them during a fight with a foe like Zod.

You don’t need a scene, you need to just trust in who the character is.

You’ve convinced yourselves, or maybe allowed others to do so, that because there are people on the street is MUST mean that there were people in the building that Superman slammed Zod against, or that some of them may have died when Zod tossed the oil tanker behind Superman.

Neither allegation is supported by the facts. You have merely your perspective to fuel your negativity.

The fact is that the people on the street were from ONE building, the Planet building. The other buildings had been evacuated. You have the word of the storyboarder to back that up.

You also forget that time within the movie does not move at the same pace as it does in real life.

Though in real life it took minutes for the military to retrieve Kal’s ship, to put it on the plane, and to fly the plane to Metropolis, within the narrative this most likely took HOURS. During that time, it stands to reason that the military evacuated the people of Metropolis, with the exception of the Daily Planet staff, which was the last to leave.

This is how reporters work. They don’t shy away from battlefields. They stay there to report the news as it happens.

You can believe whatever you want to believe in.

You want to believe that Superman callously killed innocent people in a building full of people.

I prefer to believe that Superman would never endanger an innocent.

It may be a matter of perspective on who we consider Superman to be.

Maybe you think of him as someone who hangs around super powered pets, I consider him someone who will go to the extremes of the Earth and the universe at large to save the lives of the innocent, just like he did in Action Comics #1.

I could not agree more, Mr. Waid. Everything you’ve said here rings 110% true, and as a Superman fan I wanted (and was eager) to fall in love with this film. Instead I felt as though I had been bludgeoned into submission with a 300-pound lead pipe with the name Michael Bay carved into it. There was absolutely nothing heroic, wondrous, or joyful about Man of Steel. Christ, even The Hulk cared more about the collateral damage his antics caused. And he’s a mindless smashing machine. It actually saddens me to read so many of the glowing reviews I’ve seen. Does the general public really fail to understand the character of Superman as much as Snyder/Goyer/Nolan seem to? Or have our standards for what constitutes an entertaining popcorn movie simply fallen so far that essentially watching someone else play a Rated-M-for-Mature, destruction-porn video game has become an acceptable, enjoyable filmgoing experience?

Dear Everyone: Trust me, as someone who has been relentlessly stalked on the internet for years by this Sacal guy, I’m even more tired of him and his insults than the rest of you must certainly be by now. Add that to the fact that this thread’s devolved into a shouting match, and I’m shutting it down for good now. To all of you who had insightful comments, agree or disagree, thanks. Sorry if my stalker spoiled your fun.